Help

No account yet?
Registering is free, easy, and private.
Discuss in the forum, contribute to the Encyclopedia, build your own MyAnime lists, and more.

UC Irvine Extension Offers New Courses on Manga & Anime

Mar 7th 2007

UC Irvine Extension Offers New Course on Manga & Anime
UC Irvine Extension Expands Its Anime Course offerings in Response to High Demand of Charter Course
IRVINE, Calif. – March, 2007 In response to the high demand of their charter course, “Manga & Anime Explosion: What, Why, How & Wow,” UC Irvine Extension is offering “Manga & Anime Explosion: Story Development, Marketing and Adaptation,” a follow-up course designed to help writers and artists finish developing their characters. Course work will focus on putting characters into compelling story arcs and creating the visually dynamic imagery for which anime and manga are famous. The course, held Tuesday evenings from May 8-June 5, 7-10p.m., supports a growing demand for courses that assist budding manga and anime creators.

Students will discover why Shojo and Shonen manga are more successful than most western comics at putting the reader “inside the story,” thus creating more audience involvement. They will go beyond their I-am list to enhance characters with three-dimensional qualities, incorporating facial expressiveness, body language, inner life, visual distinctiveness and effective use of dialogue. Visual layout and style will be addressed for artists, including how mangas visually frame actions to strengthen stories and exploit plot twists. Students will discover how to create rich, believable worlds for readers to explore like the manga-ka's do.

Guest speakers will include Dallas Middaugh, Associate Publisher of Del Rey Manga, Christine Yoo the co-writer of the English language adaptation screenplay for "Afro Samurai" and other buyers/executives from top manga publishing and anime companies.

Northrop Davis, the instructor, an accomplished screenwriter who has sold pitches — he subsequently wrote as screenplays — to Sony and 20th Century FOX, is also an expert in manga and has extensive contacts with Japanese comic publishers. He pitched the "Battle Angel Alita" manga series to FOX, which it acquired for James Cameron who is in production on the vfx-heavy film franchise. Davis will offer his expertise and experience to students, including advice on pitching projects to studios. He is currently co-producing a remake of the Japanese hit TV show, “TRAIN MAN,” with John Davis' production company.

The first course in the series, “Manga & Anime Explosion: What, Why, How & Wow,” starts on April 3 and is open to the public on the UC Irvine campus. “Manga & Anime Explosion: Story Development, Marketing and Adaptation” begins on May 8. The cost for each course is $225. To register for the courses or for more information, visit www.extension.uci.edu or call (949) 824-5414.

About UC Irvine Extension
As the continuing education arm of UCI, UC Irvine Extension is dedicated to providing a university-level learning experience for students, offering thousands of exciting courses and programs to local, regional, and global constituencies. UC Irvine Extension offers a rich array of academic and community programs to support a diverse audience, from a wide selection of academic programs to numerous campus activities. For more information, please visit www.extension.uci.edu.

About the University of California, Irvine
The University of California, Irvine is a top-ranked university dedicated to research, scholarship and community service. Founded in 1965, UCI is among the fastest-growing University of California campuses, with more than 24,000 undergraduate and graduate students and about 1,400 faculty members. The second-largest employer in dynamic Orange County, UCI contributes an annual economic impact of $3.3 billion. For more UCI news, visit www.today.uci.edu.

Travel back in time (and maybe have your gender swapped) to seven different periods of Japanese history, all from the comfort of your couch.― The history of Japanese civilization is expansive, predating the Common Era by 10,000 years (the Jomon period). There's much more ground to cover compared to what kids get in U.S. history classes in high school, which rarely cover anything before the Boston T...

Junji Ito's death-stench horror gets the deluxe treatment with a new hardcover omnibus, but the subject matter might not work for everyone.― Junji Ito is inarguably one of the masters of horror manga, utilizing both horror (physical revulsion) and terror (psychological reaction) to create gut-churning tales of the world gone mad. To a degree, he carries this out in his two-volume series Gyo from 200...

Voice actor/director/professional Dungeons & Dragons player Liam O'Brien returns to the podcast after a 5-year hiatus to discuss his roles in Fate/Zero and Sailor Moon, along with the landscape for anime voice acting now and what it's like to be Gollum.― ANNCast Episode 234: Podcastoes O'Brien Get the Flash Player to see this player. Voice actor/director/professional Dungeons & Dragons player Liam ...

If you went to an anime convention this summer or have used the internet lately, you may notice anime fans seem to have fallen in love with Steven Universe. Why? Because the show loves them right back.― If you've been to an anime convention in the past year, you've probably seen colorful, gem-studded cosplay like this filling the hallways. Photo credit links: top left, top right, bottom left, bottom...

If you've got questions for the director of the high-flying fantasy series The Pilot's Love Song, we've potentially got answers for you!― We've been given the opportunity to interview The Pilot's Love Song director Toshimasa Suzuki, and we need your help! NISA, who will be releasing the fantasy action drama The Pilot's Love Song on bluray September 22nd, asked for fan questions for Mr. Suzuki, whos...

Bee-Train's 2001 girls-with-guns classic returns on Blu-Ray, and holds up surprisingly well, despite some mediocre animation.― Not all older series deserve the Blu-Ray treatment. For some it is because the show just isn't as iconic as people might like to think, while for others it's because the quality was never BD worthy in the first place. Noir, fortunately, does hold up well enough that its tran...

Egypt Arc is JoJo in peak condition, as memorable and engaging an adventure as you could hope for. JoJo's Bizarre Adventure is back.― When we last left our heroes, they'd just arrived on the shores of Egypt, escaping the literal jaws of defeat in order to finally save Jotaro's mother. The journey there had been a lengthy and sometimes inconsistent one, with their various adventures indeed being plen...

The creator of the hit manga, recently adapted into a popular anime series, talks about her inspirations, how she got her start, and what it's like to watch your manga become a TV show.― As you might guess from the story, the main character of the story is a high school roughneck named Ryu Yamada. Yamada meets cute, quiet, and studious Urara Shiraishi, who is his complete opposite in almost every wa...